Does your Government (and thus you) actually own its data? | eaves.ca

Does your Government (and thus you) actually own its data? | eaves.ca: "The story is as such. Public Engines Inc is paid by police departments to collect and analyze their crime data. Given this privileged position Public Engines strips the data of privacy related information and, through a service called CrimeReports.com, it allows citizens to see maps of it and so forth.

The problem is, this isn't actually open data. As I argue in the three laws of open data (and the good folks at Berkman seem to share my sense of humour) crime data for cities that contract with Public Engines Inc isn't open. You can look at the data, but you can't touch it. Worst still... don't even think about playing with it (unless you are doing so ON crimereports.com website, in a way that their license lets you - its all quite constraining stuff).

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